


No Victory

by mllevangogh



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:02:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1612643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mllevangogh/pseuds/mllevangogh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the cameras are elsewhere, Cato kisses her fingers with surprising delicacy.  “We’ll kill them all,” he promises her.  “And then we’ll go home and they’ll have parades for us, and we’ll wear wreaths of flowers on our heads.”</p><p>She smiles sleepily, achingly, sweetly.  It dances on her face like a dragonfly. </p><p>It’s harder than you’d think, loving to kill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Victory

In the night they can see the false stars. Clove counts them for Cato as he falls asleep, her breath hot in his ear. 

One, two, three, four, five...

When the cameras are elsewhere, Cato kisses her fingers with surprising delicacy. “We’ll kill them all,” he promises her. “And then we’ll go home and they’ll have parades for us, and we’ll wear wreaths of flowers on our heads.”

She smiles sleepily, achingly, sweetly. It dances on her face like a dragonfly. 

It’s harder than you’d think, loving to kill. 

They’ve agreed not to make a show of it like the idiots in District Twelve. They aren’t here to be in love.

“I’d still kill you,” says Clove one day as they hunt for food. “If it came down to it, I’d slice open your throat.” She looks at him casually. “I’d make it quick. You wouldn’t even realize it was happening.”

Cato smiles quickly, flashing like lightning on his stony face. “That’s the difference between us and them.” He swats a branch out of his way. “We’re better than them.” Clove smiles to herself privately in that way she does. Cato smirks. “But it’s not an issue anyway,” he says. “Because we’re both going home.”

Clove pulls her dark hair back and out of her face as she watches a rabbit flit around a mossy clearing with a bloody hunger in her eyes. “We’re both going home,” she affirms before she flings the knife between the rabbit’s eyes.

Sometimes he watches her run, the pure adrenaline coating her face in glee, the way her hair streaks after her like a banner, the way the metal in her hand sparkles in the sunlight. He thinks about after the Games, when they’re home in the palaces they reserve for Victors. He’d like to braid her long, dark hair, feeling it slip between his fingers. He’d like to count the freckles on her skin like she counts the stars when he can’t sleep, the adrenaline pumping too deeply in his veins. He’d like to see what her eyelashes look like from millimeters away. 

It’s wrong when she’s out of his sight, when she’s gone, but he lets her roam like a satellite. She’s smarter than he is. She knows what she’s doing. 

But he isn’t with her when she dies. He remembers this for the rest of his short life. He remembers the cannon, though, her face flashing across the sky. He remembers something hot slipping down his face, and he thinks, So these are tears. He remembers his fists clenched tightly, he remembers finding Thresh and screaming himself hoarse at him. Thresh fights, but Clove is fueling Cato now, living in his very veins, and when he crushes Thresh’s thick neck, it feels like justice for her, and he can hear her laugh in his heart, reverberating around his ribcage. 

“YOU KILLED HER! YOU KILLED HER YOU KILLED HER!” screams Cato into his face, even after the light’s gone there. It’s a stupid statement of fact but it’s all he has left, this fact, because there are no words for what he really means, no words for the images Thresh has stolen from him, no words for the song of Clove’s laughter, no color to replace that of her hair and her eyes, that warm black, the color of Cato’s heart. 

Cato breaks Thresh’s nose with his boot before he departs.

But the rage in his heart that was Clove is dying, dying like she died, pleading and screaming Cato’s name. And all she leaves is a scared little boy who wants to kill and to die. That’s what he’s been trained to do. That’s all he’s been trained to do.

He realizes this, a stupid epiphany, when he’s standing on top of the Cornucopia. He realizes once more how clever Clove was, how really brilliant she’d been, because she knew this all along, knew it in her bones. But it takes until the moment before his death for Cato to realize that he was born to die, that there was no Victor after all.

When he falls from the Cornucopia, it feels like relief.

Clove tears at his neck, at his heart with her teeth, just as she always has. It’s just that this time, the teeth are real.

When his heart shudders to a stall, aided by the arrow of Twelve, it makes a sound like Clove Clove Clove and for the first time in his life, Cato wonders if there’s something after this blackness, but then the blackness smooths away those thoughts.


End file.
